Back in the good old days when mountain bikes looked like well, mountain bikes and no one liked us and we diddnt care, specialized and tioga farmers were the tyre of choice and everyone either had a muddy fox, stumpy, canondale or an orange we went on rides. such as a ride up box hill, a ride over the south downs, the odd cross county bit through the lake district and so on.
Then something happened, I must have been asleep at the time as i obviously missed the event but places called "trail centres" suddenly appeared. ok i get that, i even took my chute to p.o.r.c. in the late 90,s but that was where you go if you were insane.
Then hydroforming happened, ok I get that as well, its evolution innit. But having a "trail" thats 500 meters long and calling it something like "the devils underpants" or similar and then rolling around the car park on the lapierre bouncing up and down before pulling on the fox body armour and full face with oakleys and having another "ride" on the "widowmaker".
Two things have occured to me.
1. retro is as welcome as a fart in a space suit at these places.
2. Mountain biking isnt well....mountain biking any more.
is it?

_________________1998 GT lts.1990 fisher montare/procaliber tribute.1984 raleigh record sprint and the full set of Pacific Blue on dvd.

1. retro is as welcome as a fart in a space suit at these places (trail centres)

You had me up to the statement above, I have taken both the Paces to trail centres around the UK and I never get any response other than admiration & respect from complete strangers, I've even been asked if I wanted to sell and also told never to sell and keep riding them

Never been to one. Never wanted to. I don't really 'get it' But there's one being built not far from me, been following progress on facebook and I really fancy taking my kona along once it opens.
I figure you should try everything once.
My initial thought that its just sanitised quick thrills for people who can't be bothered to ride a few miles and up hills to find natural trails may or may not be true.

i agree in part that trail centres are killing mountain biking, but then that is possibly because they are better.

when i was a lad we used to go hunting for new places to ride, generally ended up around fields or small patches of single track in woodland. we loved it and i still ride those trails today. sadly many are really overgrown now, showing that they are just not getting used anymore, it is sad.

I blame the trail centres, a few hours in a car and you can have a really good ride on really well maintained trails.

i feel like i should hate them but they have definately got something right

i have also noticed a huge amount of snobbery in the car parks though!

I recently got invited on a "ride" with a few guys who work at a company I deal with. They were going to Glentress and thought I might be interested, not really my type of thing but I thought it might be fun.

Then I had a chat with them and discovered their days at GT consisted of uplifts to the top and then riding back down, sitting talking and then another uplift etc.

I didn't go.

Fair play to them, it's their idea of mountain biking and they get enjoyment out of it but it's a totally different reason to why I do it. None of them consider themselves cyclists and wouldn't ride a bike for any other reason than trail centres.

There's plenty of uphill riding at trail centres believe me, to come down you have to go up, and there isn't uplift facilities at every centre, in fact there are only a couple of centres that have uplift facilities that I know of.

Glyncorrwg's Whites Level, where I ride a lot, is about 4-5 miles of uphill singletrack on every kind of offroad surface you can imagine, but its worth it once you reach the top

Hang on, I thought this was a trail naming rant, not a trail centre rant?

My unfavourite is the trail in the Peak District that used to be known as "that rocky one down from Hope Cross" until the internet came along, and is now apparently "The Beast", presumably to lend it an aura of hazard and extremitude and machismo.

Hang on, I thought this was a trail naming rant, not a trail centre rant?

My unfavourite is the trail in the Peak District that used to be known as "that rocky one down from Hope Cross" until the internet came along, and is now apparently "The Beast", presumably to lend it an aura of hazard and extremitude and machismo.

I now call it "Fluffy Kittens" in an attempt to redress the balance.

Ah but to me that is part of the machismo that some lads have at trail centres. Even if you read a review of a set of wheels or a fork online there are people going on about 10 foot drops that they do all the time. A two foot drop gets me scared!! But then again I may view it differently if I was dressed like a stormtrooper with 6" of travel either end.

So to that end saying you nailed a 10 foot off camber drop on Fluffy Kitten doesn't work when you are telling your mates about it. A ten foot drop on The Bonegrinder sounds much better.

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